Cargando…
Can e-learning improve the performance of undergraduate medical students in Clinical Microbiology examinations?
BACKGROUND: Clinical Microbiology is a core subject in medical undergraduate curricula. However, students struggle to cover the content and clinically contextualise basic microbiology. Our aim was to evaluate student engagement with new e-learning material and to investigate the impact it had on exa...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2019
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6836379/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31699068 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-019-1843-0 |
_version_ | 1783466892854296576 |
---|---|
author | Stevens, Niall T. Holmes, Killian Grainger, Rachel J. Connolly, Roisín Prior, Anna-Rose Fitzpatrick, Fidelma O’Neill, Eoghan Boland, Fiona Pawlikowska, Teresa Humphreys, Hilary |
author_facet | Stevens, Niall T. Holmes, Killian Grainger, Rachel J. Connolly, Roisín Prior, Anna-Rose Fitzpatrick, Fidelma O’Neill, Eoghan Boland, Fiona Pawlikowska, Teresa Humphreys, Hilary |
author_sort | Stevens, Niall T. |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Clinical Microbiology is a core subject in medical undergraduate curricula. However, students struggle to cover the content and clinically contextualise basic microbiology. Our aim was to evaluate student engagement with new e-learning material and to investigate the impact it had on examination performance in a Clinical Microbiology module. METHODS: An online resource was designed to support didactic teaching in a Fundamentals of Clinical Microbiology module. One cohort of students had access to the online material (2017/2018 class) and the other did not (2016/2017 class). Each cohort sat the same multiple-choice question (MCQ) and short-note question (SNQ) examination papers and the impact of engagement with the online resource and examination performance was analysed. RESULTS: Both groups were of the same academic standard prior to beginning the module. In the 2017/2018 cohort, 227/309 (73.5%) students had ≥80% engagement with the content. Students engaged most with the index of pathogens and pathogen focused clinical cases related to diverse genera and families of clinically important microorganisms. A statistically higher difference in the mean percentage grade in both the MCQ and SNQ examinations was seen for 2017/2018 compared to 2016/2017 cohort. For the MCQ examination, the 2017/2018 cohort were on average 5.57% (95% confidence interval (CI): 3.92 to 7.24%; P < 0.001) higher, and for the SNQ examination the 2017/2018 cohort were on average 2.08% (95% CI: 0.74 to 3.41%; P = 0.02) higher. When the results were adjusted for previous examination performance, for every percentage increase in online engagement the grade in the SNQ examination only increased by 0.05% (95% CI: 0.02 to 0.08) on average. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest students engage with e-learning when studying and that such activities may help students perform better in assessments. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6836379 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-68363792019-11-08 Can e-learning improve the performance of undergraduate medical students in Clinical Microbiology examinations? Stevens, Niall T. Holmes, Killian Grainger, Rachel J. Connolly, Roisín Prior, Anna-Rose Fitzpatrick, Fidelma O’Neill, Eoghan Boland, Fiona Pawlikowska, Teresa Humphreys, Hilary BMC Med Educ Research Article BACKGROUND: Clinical Microbiology is a core subject in medical undergraduate curricula. However, students struggle to cover the content and clinically contextualise basic microbiology. Our aim was to evaluate student engagement with new e-learning material and to investigate the impact it had on examination performance in a Clinical Microbiology module. METHODS: An online resource was designed to support didactic teaching in a Fundamentals of Clinical Microbiology module. One cohort of students had access to the online material (2017/2018 class) and the other did not (2016/2017 class). Each cohort sat the same multiple-choice question (MCQ) and short-note question (SNQ) examination papers and the impact of engagement with the online resource and examination performance was analysed. RESULTS: Both groups were of the same academic standard prior to beginning the module. In the 2017/2018 cohort, 227/309 (73.5%) students had ≥80% engagement with the content. Students engaged most with the index of pathogens and pathogen focused clinical cases related to diverse genera and families of clinically important microorganisms. A statistically higher difference in the mean percentage grade in both the MCQ and SNQ examinations was seen for 2017/2018 compared to 2016/2017 cohort. For the MCQ examination, the 2017/2018 cohort were on average 5.57% (95% confidence interval (CI): 3.92 to 7.24%; P < 0.001) higher, and for the SNQ examination the 2017/2018 cohort were on average 2.08% (95% CI: 0.74 to 3.41%; P = 0.02) higher. When the results were adjusted for previous examination performance, for every percentage increase in online engagement the grade in the SNQ examination only increased by 0.05% (95% CI: 0.02 to 0.08) on average. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest students engage with e-learning when studying and that such activities may help students perform better in assessments. BioMed Central 2019-11-07 /pmc/articles/PMC6836379/ /pubmed/31699068 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-019-1843-0 Text en © The Author(s). 2019 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Stevens, Niall T. Holmes, Killian Grainger, Rachel J. Connolly, Roisín Prior, Anna-Rose Fitzpatrick, Fidelma O’Neill, Eoghan Boland, Fiona Pawlikowska, Teresa Humphreys, Hilary Can e-learning improve the performance of undergraduate medical students in Clinical Microbiology examinations? |
title | Can e-learning improve the performance of undergraduate medical students in Clinical Microbiology examinations? |
title_full | Can e-learning improve the performance of undergraduate medical students in Clinical Microbiology examinations? |
title_fullStr | Can e-learning improve the performance of undergraduate medical students in Clinical Microbiology examinations? |
title_full_unstemmed | Can e-learning improve the performance of undergraduate medical students in Clinical Microbiology examinations? |
title_short | Can e-learning improve the performance of undergraduate medical students in Clinical Microbiology examinations? |
title_sort | can e-learning improve the performance of undergraduate medical students in clinical microbiology examinations? |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6836379/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31699068 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-019-1843-0 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT stevensniallt canelearningimprovetheperformanceofundergraduatemedicalstudentsinclinicalmicrobiologyexaminations AT holmeskillian canelearningimprovetheperformanceofundergraduatemedicalstudentsinclinicalmicrobiologyexaminations AT graingerrachelj canelearningimprovetheperformanceofundergraduatemedicalstudentsinclinicalmicrobiologyexaminations AT connollyroisin canelearningimprovetheperformanceofundergraduatemedicalstudentsinclinicalmicrobiologyexaminations AT priorannarose canelearningimprovetheperformanceofundergraduatemedicalstudentsinclinicalmicrobiologyexaminations AT fitzpatrickfidelma canelearningimprovetheperformanceofundergraduatemedicalstudentsinclinicalmicrobiologyexaminations AT oneilleoghan canelearningimprovetheperformanceofundergraduatemedicalstudentsinclinicalmicrobiologyexaminations AT bolandfiona canelearningimprovetheperformanceofundergraduatemedicalstudentsinclinicalmicrobiologyexaminations AT pawlikowskateresa canelearningimprovetheperformanceofundergraduatemedicalstudentsinclinicalmicrobiologyexaminations AT humphreyshilary canelearningimprovetheperformanceofundergraduatemedicalstudentsinclinicalmicrobiologyexaminations |